The desirability of providing automatic erasure in typewriters, printers and the like has recently become a practical reality. One of the present day approaches is the provision of an additional tape or ribbon provided on one surface with an adhesive material. When it is desired to remove an incorrect character which may have been erroneously printed, a separate mechanism or key is activated to move the conventional inked ribbon away from the normal printing position, move the "erasure" (i.e. correction) ribbon or tape into the print position, back-space the carriage to permit printing to occur at the position of the erroneously printed character and finally, the appropriate "wrong" character key is depressed or a character code is generated, if remote operation is being undertaken, whereupon the same erroneous character is impacted first against the "erasure" tape and then against the paper so that the character in the form of the ink transferred to the paper sheet is pulled away from the paper to thereby cause an operation which is equivalent to conventional erasure. The adhesive strip must be held taut across the printing position so as to pull away from the paper when the type is returned to its non-print position.
In another conventional technique a card having a powder of a color the same as the paper sheet is manually positioned next to the paper sheet after the typewriter is backspaced to the proper position. The key of the "wrong" character is then depressed to impact the card and transfer the powder to the paper and upon the ink previously transferred to the paper.
The drawbacks of the above techniques are obvious in that, in the latter technique, the number of operations required are rather cumbersome and require manual activity. The printing of the incorrect character in "white" over the original printing of the incorrect character may be less than complete or otherwise imperfect so as to permit a portion or portions of the "black" incorrect character to nevertheless remain visible, resulting in a rather unattractive finished document. The mechanical manipulations of the former technique and the mechanisms which must be shifted and which hold the adhesive tape taut are also rather cumbersome. In addition, the adhesive also pulls the paper and may cause tearing.